Claudine Pépin’s French Cooking for Beginners is a delicious collection of approachable and authentic recipes that will transport you directly to France. I love the bright and beautiful pictures, the easy recipes, and Pépin’s friendly writing.

The book is divided into chapters: To Start (Appetizers); To Continue (Mains); On the Side (Side Dishes); and To Finish (Dessert, of course!). There’s also a helpful Menus section which organises the book’s recipes into preset meals according to the season. The book features popular traditional appetizers like Gougères (light and airy cheese puffs) while main dishes include Boeuf Bourguignon (a hearty beef stew filled with mushrooms, bacon, and wine!), and Salade Niçoise (a multi-step and time intensive tuna. potato, and egg salad). Classic side dishes include the famous Ratatouille (a vegetable stew) and Spinach with Béchamel. Popular dessert favourites include Clafoutis (a very easy cherry filled cake), and Sablés (France’s version of the sugar cookie!).

I had such a lovely (and hungry time) reading this cookbook! Pépin’s writing is concise and friendly. The recipes are clearly-detailed and easy-to-follow. Each recipe begins with a brief write-up offering helpful tips, ingredient swaps, a little background of the dish, and serving suggestions. I also learned about Pépin’s family and their eating habits. However, I wish she had spent more time highlighting French culture and cuisine.

I love the approachability of all the dishes! Although some of the recipes are time or labour-intensive, the dishes in this book are doable for even the most amateur cook. The majority of the ingredients are affordable and accessible pantry staples like eggs, flour, and butter. Even the slightly more specialty items like Gruyére and Comté cheeses are still moderately inexpensive and easy to find.

I also love Pépin’s dedication to showcasing fresh ingredients and her emphasis on producing food from scratch. I also like that she isn’t afraid of using convenience foods to simplify the cooking process as store-bought Pepperidge Farm puff pastry features in a few recipes.

I like the book’s clean and pretty layout. I particularly love the homey and colouful drawings of eggs, fruits, and vegetables that appear on most of the pages. They add a lovely visual touch! I also love the full-colour pictures of food and France! I enjoyed the insight into French daily life with the photos of restaurants, markets, and iconic French landmarks. But, I would have liked these pictures labelled so I could have a clear sense of the locations. I also appreciate that all of the recipes have accompanying full-colour and simply staged beautiful photographs which really allow the beauty of the food to shine.




🥖🥖🥖🥖½ out of 5 baguettes!

French cuisine has always intimidated me just a little bit. I've tried a few things before, but for the most part I avoided it thinking it was sure to be too complicated for me, a mediocre but impassioned home cook.

Cooking classic French recipes does not have to be complicated.

This book is fairly short but it has most of the essentials. You'll find your crepes, your croque monsieur, and your creme brulee. There were also a few things I was surprised to find there weren't recipes for, like coq a vin, French onion soup, or cassoulet. Nonetheless, this is a really good introduction to French cooking, and probably an ideal cookbook for true beginners. The food photography is also just exquisite, so major props to the photographer there.

I enjoyed this book however I wouldn't say it is for beginners! There are recipes such as souffle and I think you need a basic grasp of cookery skills as often the recipes just saw saute this for example.

The recipes also felt quite long with items you might not find in the local supermarket eg provence herbs (it would be more beneficial if they explained what these individual herbs are).

I did like the visuals and the handy notes throughout the book.

Thank you for the arc.

~~~ I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review ~~~

French Cooking for Beginners is a lovely collection of French recipes that would be do-able for an average cook. This cookbook is neatly arranged into categories: "To Start," "To Continue," "On the Side," and "To End." It is also scattered with beautiful photographs of the food and France. I found a few recipes I'd like to try including "Chicken with Cream Sauce" and the French sugar cookie "Sables." At the end this cookbook has space for you to write out your favorite French recipes.

This cookbook has the most gorgeous photos of food and France that I have ever seen. Just gorgeous. For a weekend dinner I chose to make vichyssoise, sauteed white fish, parsnip potato puree, vinaigrette for a week, and
clafoutis. My 16 year old had two bowls of the vichyssoise that night and the next night. She has asked that this be our new leek and potato soup recipe. The fish was amazing. The sauce just tipped it over into incredible. I had a leftover piece with salad the next night cold and it was still very good. The parsnip potato puree was also good but I halved the amount of butter as I felt 6 tablespoons was a bit much. I made a green salad to use with the vinaigrette. This will be one of my standard homemade salad dressings now. I'd never heard of clafoutis so of course that had to be dessert. So yummy! My husband kept sneaking bites.

I highly recommend this cookbook for anyone interested in French cooking. Very lovely recipes that do not require unusual ingredients and make suggestions for substitutions.

Well I expected a lot more from this. A brief cookbook such as this doesn't have the time to give us pointless double-page spreads of needless imagery, but here it does. Ooh, some anonymous buildings with no relevance. Wow, a stall's selection of cheeses cubed up for people to sample. Oh, they have markets in France? As a result we get a paucity of dishes, and no mistake, to the extent that the entire cuisine of French starters becomes reduced to four.

That said, this will successfully get you eating French flavours and dishes – a full-on salad Nicoise, beef bourguignon, a creamy chicken with tarragon that looks to die for – but you won't get nearly enough of it. And it still is flawed – the fancy devilled eggs pictured are nothing like that in the recipe, and the book insists on us having the option of a soup, when all it's done is given us vichyssoise. So when you get to the countless blank pages for our own recipes, you just have to laugh. We're the beginners, I thought – you're supposed to be the ones giving us the recipes. Not one to hasten out for, unless you really are French and love style over substance.

This is a wonderful cookbook for anyone to enjoy. The pictures transported me to France and I cannot wait to try the recipes. Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for a gifted copy.

I enjoyed reading this cooking book. All of the recipes look quite delicious. It was quite wonderful to see pictures of the some of the recipes dishes. All of the recipes look easy to make.

I received a complimentary copy via Netgalley. This is my honest unbiased opinions.

I love the variety of recipes available in this book. The recipes are easy to follow and are not too hard to make

There really is something you can't beat about authentic French food but sometimes it can seem intimidating to try and replicate your favourites at home. "French Cooking for Beginners" is definitely a book that will reassure you and make you eager start cooking those dishes again.
The recipes in the book are varied and mouth watering and they are interspersed with beautiful scenes of France and drool worthy photos of the recipes featured. The recipes are straight forward and accessible and include helpful tips about substitute ingredients. I did note that throughout the book, the recipes only use one kind of cheese, (Gruyere) but there's no real explanation to why other cheeses aren't used. It was great to have seasonal dinner party suggestions at the end and room to add your own French recipes.

Thank you to Claudine Pepin, Quarry at Quarto Publishing and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

For many years, our family enjoyed watching Claudine Pepin work with her father on their PBS cooking shows. Now Ms. Pepin has her own cookbook for us titled: French Cooking for Beginners. This book provides an approachable way for a beginner to cook classic French recipes. The recipes in the cookbook are organized by course, with sections titled: We Begin To Start, followed by To Continue, On the Side, and To Finish. Classic recipes such as ratatouille, beef bourguignon, crepes, and crème brulee, that are enjoyed by Pepin's family are described and beautifully illustrated with pictures of each dish. The recipes are easy to follow and use fresh and easily found ingredients. Pepin even includes some shortcuts - such as using frozen puff pastry for her quiche recipe.

French Cooking for Beginners is an especially good cookbook to start a new cook with so that they can learn basic recipes and techniques associated with French cooking. The recipes are well illustrated and are delicious. I especially loved the photographs of France included throughout the book and the illustrations contributed by the Pepins.

Thank you NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC copy in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

I cannot wait to try some of these recipes with the modifications suggested. This book is perfect for beginners tlike me new to French cooking. There are lots of good tips shared among the recipes and beautiful photos of the ingredients and finished dishes as well from France which sets a lovely tone for the book. I felt like I was strolling through a French marketplace and very much enjoyed the inspiration.

STUNNING photography. I could practically taste/smell the food through the pages. The recipes were laid out cleanly and I enjoyed the preface to each recipe. I think having a pronunciation listed beneath some of the recipes would have been helpful seeing as this is a beginner's cookbook. The only thing I thought might be confusing was the use of two measurement systems within the ingredient lists. It made it cluttered.

Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group — Quarry for the digital ARC provided via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you for the opportunity to preview this book.

I remember watching and enjoying the cooking show with Ms. Pepin and her father years ago and was pleasantly surprised to see this cookbook.

The recipes are fairly easy, with common ingredients found at your grocery store. I especially loved that there were photos of each dish, with cute watercolor drawings on the opposing pages.

I cannot wait to try to make her Gougères this weekend.

Lovely book for any level of cook.

French Cooking for Beginners is a feast for the eyes and the palate. The recipes are easy to follow and the style is sophisticated but approachable. The photography is gorgeous and would make a great gift for any foodie.

A really nice introduction to the world of French cooking. This book will appeal to beginning cooks, or to people who just want to dabble in creating French cuisine. Unlike most French cookbooks, it contains a great number of easily understood and easy to follow recipes. And they are beautifully photographed. I will be referring to this book many times in the future!

Never particularly been a fan of French recipes but this book has definitely given me food for thought. Pardon the pun. Several delicious looking recipes I’d like to try.

this is must buy for those wanting to try their hand at french food. I think some were a bit intimidating but overall it was home chef friendly. THis was a good showing of classic french foods.

Nice cookbook with some amazing recipes! I love the photos and I can't wait to try some of these recipes! There are recipes for appetizers, main dishes, side dishes and desserts. And at the end there are extra pages for you to write more recipes. I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

Claudine Pepin, Jacques Pepin's daughter, has written French Cooking for Beginners in a format where the reader selects a "to start", "to continue", "to side", and "to finish" in order to create a four-course French meal. With this structure you get a refined list main courses and vegetables that showcase French cuisine but a still simple to make. When you think of French cooking rich sauces and elegant desserts come to mind but here Pepin has given classics like quiche, beef bourguignon, salade nicoise, and roast chicken as well as clafoutis, creme brulee, and crepes. These provide French flavor with freshness more than richness.